Speaker 1: Stranger Rivals is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron making for the best experience listen
Speaker 1: with headphones.
Speaker 2: This episode includes discussion of violence and sexual abuse that
Speaker 2: while they almost definitely did not actually happen, maybe disturbing
Speaker 2: to some listeners.
Speaker 3: Surface readings register of but minimum requirements Tomorrow go below
Speaker 3: and bring up the Young Gargon specimen.
Speaker 4: Now the decision depends on its reactions.
Speaker 2: Wait, Captain, I have found evidence of intelligent beings on
Speaker 2: this planet.
Speaker 5: Of what concerned our foreign being?
Speaker 2: Of none to you, thor, just as you were so
Speaker 2: unconcerned when you destroyed the small creature so bravely.
Speaker 3: It was no more than an insects, but it had life,
Speaker 3: and that life you had to take satisfy your endless
Speaker 3: hunger for killing China.
Speaker 6: Both of you.
Speaker 7: Proceed, bring the gargain that will not be necessary. Captain.
Speaker 2: I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals. Episode eight,
Speaker 2: The Case of Emma Woods, Part three. In the past
Speaker 2: two episodes, we looked at the experiences of a woman
Speaker 2: going by the pseudonym Emma Woods, who worked with UFO
Speaker 2: researcher David Jacobs to uncover memories of what he believed
Speaker 2: to be alien abductions, violent alien abductions. We saw how
Speaker 2: Jacobs allegedly used hypnotic regression in a manner that was
Speaker 2: both scientifically and ethically unsound. He also seemed to create
Speaker 2: a drama in the quote unquote real world, a drama
Speaker 2: that involved Emma, two other research subjects, Elizabeth and Brian,
Speaker 2: and hostile human alien hybrids. These hybrids apparently did not
Speaker 2: want Jacobs to continue with his research and threatened him
Speaker 2: with harm if he did. In an attempt to convince
Speaker 2: these hybrids that he wasn't researching abductions, he hypnotically implanted
Speaker 2: a suggestion to Emma that she had multiple personality disorder
Speaker 2: and that was what he was researching. The idea was
Speaker 2: that the hybrids would read Emma's mind, find that information,
Speaker 2: and be thrown off track. Jacobs even came up with
Speaker 2: aliases for himself that he wanted Emma to use when
Speaker 2: she contacted him, aliases like Aloha Norton, I'm not kidding
Speaker 2: researcher and writer Jack Brewer.
Speaker 4: His premise was, you need to call me another name
Speaker 4: and write in code to me, because when the hybrids
Speaker 4: use their mind control on you. I want the hybrids
Speaker 4: to think that Aloha Norton is an expert in multiple
Speaker 4: personality disorder and that I am studying you because I
Speaker 4: have diagnosed you with multiple personality disorder.
Speaker 2: It is frankly a weird, weird scenario and it doesn't
Speaker 2: even have an internal logic. You see, at this time,
Speaker 2: Jacobs was very public about his abduction research.
Speaker 4: Emma pointed out to him, this doesn't even make sense.
Speaker 4: For instance, you publish books about studying this, and you're
Speaker 4: on the lecture circuit talking about hybrids all the time.
Speaker 2: So what was going on here? Did Jacobs really believe
Speaker 2: that hybrids were here on Earth and that they wanted
Speaker 2: to use violence to stop his research or was there
Speaker 2: some other reason for Jacobs to concoct this odd drama.
Speaker 2: Emma Woods thinks it may simply have been a matter
Speaker 2: of creating material for his next book.
Speaker 3: It may have been just a big exciting drama for
Speaker 3: his book. He had told me that he was going
Speaker 3: to write a book and it was going to feature Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: Brian Reid's mother who uses the pseudonym Alison, and me
Speaker 3: and the three of us. He had done a huge
Speaker 3: amount of hypnosis sessions with I think he did something
Speaker 3: like possibly forty five hypnosis sessions with Alison. He did
Speaker 3: thirty seven with me, and he did well over one
Speaker 3: hundred with Elizabeth. He very much wanted my hypnosis to
Speaker 3: dovetail with elizabeths and he wanted me to be in
Speaker 3: contact with her, and I initially refused because I was
Speaker 3: worried that if I was in contact with her, it
Speaker 3: would affect my hypnosis.
Speaker 2: At this point, Emma didn't know that her hypnotic regressions
Speaker 2: were already being compromised. Jacobs was constantly introducing narratives to
Speaker 2: her while she was under hypnosis.
Speaker 3: I didn't want her to know my identity, but eventually
Speaker 3: I realized that he'd already told her my identity, and
Speaker 3: then I just gave into the pressure.
Speaker 2: This is not ethical research behavior. Jacobs should not have
Speaker 2: been sharing subjects identities with each other, particularly if a
Speaker 2: subject had specifically said that she didn't want her identity shared,
Speaker 2: but he did so anyway. Elizabeth claimed that hybrids were
Speaker 2: controlling her body and sending threatening text messages to Jacobs
Speaker 2: from her computer.
Speaker 3: When Elizabeth started having hybrid instant messaging, Jacobs told me
Speaker 3: that he was going on the run from the hybrids
Speaker 3: because they were after him, and basically he just went
Speaker 3: on holiday to Cape Cod, which he did every year
Speaker 3: in August.
Speaker 2: So Jacobs decided to go on the run from the
Speaker 2: hostile hybrids. He chose to hide out in Cape Cod,
Speaker 2: where he normally vacationed. Anyway, if you were really trying
Speaker 2: to hide, would you go to your annual vacation spot
Speaker 2: or did he use his vacation as a way to
Speaker 2: heighten the drama that he created. Regardless, Emma was becoming
Speaker 2: skeptical of Elizabeth's claims that hybrids were coming to her
Speaker 2: house and texting Jacobs from her computer, she suggested that
Speaker 2: Jacobs take a very basic step to confirm that what
Speaker 2: Elizabeth was telling him was true.
Speaker 3: I said to him at that point, well, maybe you
Speaker 3: should ask Elizabeth to set up a webcam to make
Speaker 3: sure that this is real, because it was so far
Speaker 3: out that I started to have doubts about Elizabeth. And
Speaker 3: then I felt guilty about that because of you know,
Speaker 3: she'd been sort of nice to me that I started
Speaker 3: tipped out about who. And then he kind of said, well,
Speaker 3: I can't ask her to do that, And then he
Speaker 3: did ask her and she had all these excuses for
Speaker 3: why she couldn't do.
Speaker 4: It again Jack Brewer, for reasons that only Elizabeth and
Speaker 4: her creator might know. She never agreed to do that again.
Speaker 4: I think a more skeptical mindset would have a pretty
Speaker 4: good idea why that might be.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth is an interesting player in this drama. She was
Speaker 2: presumably undergoing a similar hypnotic regression experience with Jacob's as
Speaker 2: Emma was. But then there's this strange twist in the
Speaker 2: tail where she's actively originating emails that are supposedly being
Speaker 2: composed by hybrids.
Speaker 6: The what's interesting about this Elizabeth character is back when
Speaker 6: Jeff and I were doing Katopia, we were reaching out
Speaker 6: to everyone.
Speaker 2: This is researcher, writer, and podcaster Jeremy Vaney, who, along
Speaker 2: with his podcast partner the late Jeff Ritzman, were among
Speaker 2: the first to cover this story on their Peratopia podcast.
Speaker 6: We reached out to Elizabeth and she actually indicated that
Speaker 6: she wasn't really thrilled with what was going on. She
Speaker 6: didn't necessarily even believe it herself, but she didn't want
Speaker 6: to speak publicly because she didn't want any repercussions from Jacobs.
Speaker 6: I got the idea essentially doing what he ended up
Speaker 6: doing with Emma Woods, which I guess could hurt her
Speaker 6: career somehow or her family maybe you know, that type
Speaker 6: of thing. So she just didn't want that put on her.
Speaker 6: So I don't know how true that is, because I mean,
Speaker 6: if she's the one who's doing the texts to date
Speaker 6: schif gods, then presumably she's in on the lie.
Speaker 3: So I started to realize that there was something really
Speaker 3: wrong with Elizabeth story because of the hybrid I am,
Speaker 3: and the threats and Jacob's being on the run, and
Speaker 3: it just it was so ridiculous that started to break through.
Speaker 3: But I still thought that he believed it. At that point.
Speaker 3: I was also still having hypnosis and remembering a lot
Speaker 3: of similar things, so I wasn't fully breaking out of it,
Speaker 3: and I wasn't fully understanding it, but I was at
Speaker 3: that point realizing that things were not okay.
Speaker 2: In other words, despite doing hypnosis sessions where Jacobs was
Speaker 2: reinforcing the real world drama involving Elizabeth, malicious hybrids and
Speaker 2: threats against Jacobs, things had finally become so outlandish that
Speaker 2: Emma began to doubt the narrative. Don't underestimate how difficult
Speaker 2: this is to do. Once you have committed to a worldview,
Speaker 2: it can be very hard to make peace with the
Speaker 2: idea that you might be wrong with the hypnotic reinforcement added,
Speaker 2: Emma showed great resilience to move away from Jacobs and Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: He also wanted me to set up instant messengers so
Speaker 3: that we could have three way instant messaging, and this
Speaker 3: is after the hybrid instant messaging, and I think he
Speaker 3: wanted me to be involved with that, and I just refused.
Speaker 3: I just felt that there was even at that stage
Speaker 3: when I was still being very intensively hypnotized and I
Speaker 3: still wasn't really understanding, I could feel that I just
Speaker 3: mustn't do that. I was starting to realize that things
Speaker 3: were going really wrong. So I think possibly it was
Speaker 3: just literally for his book. I think he also got
Speaker 3: a lot of personal gratification from the sort of sexual
Speaker 3: and violent aspects of it, so it may have been
Speaker 3: my personal gratification as well. And other than that, I
Speaker 3: don't know what his agenda would have been, but I
Speaker 3: don't think he believed it. It took probably about eight months.
Speaker 3: I think I went through this process of starting to
Speaker 3: realize that this was not.
Speaker 2: Okay again, Jeremy Vaney.
Speaker 6: Something about her hybrids, going after David and going after Emma.
Speaker 6: It just became too much. It became too much of
Speaker 6: la an International Hybrid Spy and intrigue novella for her,
Speaker 6: I think, and she just wanted out.
Speaker 3: And then I eventually ended my association with him, and
Speaker 3: he wanted to stay in contact with me, and he
Speaker 3: was just sending me email saying, why aren't you talking
Speaker 3: to me? I want, you know, Laudi blah. But I
Speaker 3: felt like I had to kind of disengage from him
Speaker 3: because I was a complete mess by the time I
Speaker 3: ended it. I was in a really bad state and
Speaker 3: it took me about three months to recover from the hypnosis.
Speaker 3: And I think he didn't want to let me go.
Speaker 2: This was in two thousand and seven, and while this
Speaker 2: was the end of her sessions with David Jacobs, it
Speaker 2: was not the end of the story. After the break,
Speaker 2: strange arrivals will return in a moment. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, Emma Woods ended her work with David Jacobs.
Speaker 2: He did not want her to discontinue the sessions, but
Speaker 2: that was not all. He also didn't want the story
Speaker 2: of his research efforts with her to become public. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, Emma began listening to the recordings
Speaker 2: of the hypnosis sessions that Jacobs had sent her. The
Speaker 2: session about multiple personality disorder was the final straw.
Speaker 3: I listened to my hypnosis sessions and I heard the
Speaker 3: MPD suggestions, and that shot me absolutely to the call,
Speaker 3: and I decided I was going to make it known.
Speaker 3: I sent an email with that audio cliff attached to
Speaker 3: just about everybody I could find in the UFO field,
Speaker 3: all the organizations, all the main known researchers, and that
Speaker 3: made it public.
Speaker 2: Finally, in January of twenty ten, an experiencer named Kim
Speaker 2: Carlsberg published the first story about Emma's experience on her
Speaker 2: blog out There Zone. Later that month, she published a
Speaker 2: follow up post claiming she had heard through an intermediary
Speaker 2: that Jacobs would sue anyone disclosing his work with Emma.
Speaker 2: Kim altered some of her blog entries as a result
Speaker 2: of this warning. She went on in the same post
Speaker 2: to write, if anything happens to me as far as
Speaker 2: my physical or mental well being or my reputation in
Speaker 2: the near future, please investigate who knows whether her fears
Speaker 2: were realistic, but it does indicate the paranoia that was
Speaker 2: swirling around the world of alien abductions and ufology at
Speaker 2: the time. Vaney and Richman picked up the story from
Speaker 2: Carlsberg's blog and saw firsthand Jacob's efforts at obstruction. In February,
Speaker 2: doctor Scott Lillienfeld, a psychology professor at Emory University, appeared
Speaker 2: on the Paratope podcast to discuss hypnosis and its use
Speaker 2: or misuse in UFO research. The Woods case, just recently
Speaker 2: made public was a natural topic. Jacobs wanted to warn
Speaker 2: Lillian Feld off, but in a bit of sitcom timing,
Speaker 2: contacted Lilianfeld at the very moment he was being interviewed
Speaker 2: on the podcast.
Speaker 6: And we were actually running by one of the hypnosis
Speaker 6: tapes by him that Jacobs had done with Emma Woods
Speaker 6: and saying is this credible or what do you make
Speaker 6: of this? And he actually told us during the interview
Speaker 6: that Jacobs had found out we were interviewing him and
Speaker 6: contacted him and said, hey, don't do the show. You
Speaker 6: don't know all of what's going on, blah blah, you
Speaker 6: know that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Vaney was undeterred. Later in twenty ten, UFO magazine published
Speaker 2: his article Aliens Versus Predator The Incredible Visitations at Emma Woods,
Speaker 2: which laid out in detail Emma's experience with Jacobs. Here too,
Speaker 2: Jacob's tried to intervene, contacting publisher William Burns.
Speaker 6: Jacobs actually called Burns. I think he played me the
Speaker 6: answering machine tape message from Jacobs, who is irate? Who
Speaker 6: is threatening to SNeW And Bill Burns actually told me
Speaker 6: he had a conversation with him where he said to him,
Speaker 6: you know, David, what are you gonna do. You're gonna
Speaker 6: walk into a court of law and you're gonna say
Speaker 6: all of this is true. You know, tell the judge
Speaker 6: about these alien hybrids, and you're gonna somehow say that
Speaker 6: you're being defined. How do you think that's gonna go?
Speaker 6: So naturally he didn't do that, but it just it
Speaker 6: makes you wonder, like is this guy even smart? Like
Speaker 6: is he delusional?
Speaker 2: I wanted to interview David Jacobs for the podcast to
Speaker 2: get his take on his work with Emma Woods, but
Speaker 2: my attempts to reach him when unanswered. He did, however,
Speaker 2: create a web page with the rebuttal to the charges
Speaker 2: made by Emma and others about his conduct. It was
Speaker 2: titled Emma Woods The Real Story, but was taken down
Speaker 2: a few months before this episode was published and hasn't
Speaker 2: as yet been restored. It touched on a number of
Speaker 2: aspects of his relationship and work with Emma. I was
Speaker 2: concerned that using short clips provided by Emma of what
Speaker 2: were much longer hypnosis sessions might not be fair to Jacobs.
Speaker 2: Were there contexts that would make these brief moments more acceptable?
Speaker 2: As I read his rebuttal, though, I quickly realized that
Speaker 2: context was not the issue. The text on the website began.
Speaker 5: Since two thousand and seven, Emma Woods, a pseudonym, has
Speaker 5: made unfounded public accusations against me for the past nine years.
Speaker 5: She has accused me of incompetence and negligence, criminally threatening
Speaker 5: her family, intentionally imposing emotional distress and abuse upon her
Speaker 5: in sexual perversion. These false charges are reflective of a
Speaker 5: very disturbed person. After reviewing our communications, I have come
Speaker 5: to realize that I did my very best for her
Speaker 5: as far as I could, and it is clear that
Speaker 5: I was much too kind to her and I should
Speaker 5: have stopped working with her much earlier. This was a
Speaker 5: major mistake.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go through this document point by point.
Speaker 2: I do want to touch on some parts of it, though,
Speaker 2: and I think one of the things that I find
Speaker 2: most telling about it is that his explanations exist in
Speaker 2: the strange world that he co created with Emma and
Speaker 2: other hypnosis subjects. It is the world of mass kidnappings,
Speaker 2: sexual violence committed by aliens and hybrids, and a master
Speaker 2: plan of colonization. I guess he really had no choice
Speaker 2: but to stick with the overall narrative, but Bill Burns
Speaker 2: was right that it is hard to take it seriously
Speaker 2: as an explanation for real world acts.
Speaker 5: Emma's intense isolation gave her abductors an unusual amount of
Speaker 5: free reign over her life, as they were not constrained
Speaker 5: by time or circumstance. Emma was alone nearly all of
Speaker 5: the time. Thus her abductions were extremely frequent and at
Speaker 5: all hours of the day and night. Between September twenty seventh,
Speaker 5: two thousand and five and December ninth, two thousand and six,
Speaker 5: violence against her and threats against me increased. Security for
Speaker 5: the abduction phenomenon increases enormously when abductees help hybrids who
Speaker 5: might or might not be living here. By June two
Speaker 5: thousand and six, her abductors were seriously attempting to stop
Speaker 5: her from talking with me, rather than simply telling her
Speaker 5: not to deal with me, which they did many times.
Speaker 5: They also engaged in increasingly physical and sexual violent behavior
Speaker 5: against her when she continued to disobey.
Speaker 2: He tried to explain some of his more notorious practices,
Speaker 2: again within the narrative of a hostile alien and hybrid incursion.
Speaker 2: He mentions a Betsy here, who's presumably another of his subjects.
Speaker 5: The multiple personality disorder RUSE came up when I had
Speaker 5: used a version of this for Betsy some months before
Speaker 5: under an assumed name. I emailed her saying that I
Speaker 5: was a multiple personality disorder researcher and she probably had
Speaker 5: this condition. She left the message on her computer screen
Speaker 5: in her head hybrids looked at it. When Emma's hybrids
Speaker 5: were torturing her and threatening me, I decided to change direction.
Speaker 5: I would once again become a quote multiple personality disorder
Speaker 5: researcher unquote, and expressed to her that this was the
Speaker 5: condition that allowed her to think that she was being abducted.
Speaker 5: When I brought up the MPD diagnosis. We both laughed
Speaker 5: throughout the discussion. I had hoped that my fictional MPD
Speaker 5: diagnosis would cause the hybrids to reevaluate me as a
Speaker 5: harmless person who did not believe them as testimony.
Speaker 2: Here's a clip from the MPD diagnosis session.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 7: My opinion is that yours is a classic case and
Speaker 7: that the only thing that will help you medication yours stories.
Speaker 7: I'm only interested in the fact that those stories, because
Speaker 7: multiple personalities are all different. As you know that in
Speaker 7: multiple personality disorder comes out. I think that we've been
Speaker 7: dealing with the four personalities here, or as he is,
Speaker 7: in fact Muscile personality disorder.
Speaker 2: The tape is a little difficult to understand, but he
Speaker 2: is saying that he is only interested in her stories
Speaker 2: because she has multiple personality disorder, and that he thinks
Speaker 2: they are dealing with three or four separate personalities. But
Speaker 2: the important thing is tone. Does it seem as though
Speaker 2: this is a laughter filled conversation. Jacobs also tries to
Speaker 2: make the request for Emma's unwatched panties seem more palatable.
Speaker 2: He claims they had talked several times about the benefits
Speaker 2: of getting some type of seamen sample after a sexual
Speaker 2: assault so that the DNA could be analyzed. The chastity
Speaker 2: belt episode is also brushed off. Is merely an idea
Speaker 2: that had worked with another client and that he had
Speaker 2: suggested once and then dropped when it wasn't followed up on.
Speaker 2: And then there's this extraordinary passage about the increased hostility
Speaker 2: towards abductees cooperating with Jacob's.
Speaker 5: As Emma's hybrids were making progress with her to get
Speaker 5: to me, they had also become extraordinarily violent.
Speaker 2: Over his previous years of work, Jacob's claimed aliens and
Speaker 2: hybrids had simply reprimanded abductees for their involvement with his research.
Speaker 5: But once the alien hybrid program transitioned to a new
Speaker 5: phase of assimilation on Earth, the very human looking hybrids
Speaker 5: whom I term hubrids, became even more wary and paranoid
Speaker 5: of my involvement. Their security measures increased enormously, often especially
Speaker 5: designated security hybrid now accompanying aductees and hubrids on many
Speaker 5: abduction events. His job was simple to protect the hubrids
Speaker 5: and to make sure that the abductees remained completely silent
Speaker 5: about their experiences. This was the case with Emma.
Speaker 2: He writes the following about his decision to no longer
Speaker 2: work with Emma.
Speaker 5: I received an email from Betsy's hybrid's warning me about
Speaker 5: Emma's people and seeing that Emma's hybrids were very aggressive,
Speaker 5: more aggressive than his. This was disturbing to me. It
Speaker 5: provided me with the final impetus to break off from Emma.
Speaker 5: I told them that I would no longer do hypnosis
Speaker 5: with her. Events were out of my control. I was
Speaker 5: bowing out and I could not work with her anymore.
Speaker 2: So Emma's hybrids were too violent and scared Jacob's off,
Speaker 2: leaving Emma, presumably to face them alone. So is he
Speaker 2: delusional or does he feel that he has the standing
Speaker 2: to put forward a narrative like this and have people
Speaker 2: believe him?
Speaker 4: Jack Brewer, one of the recordings that she published, indicated
Speaker 4: that when she confronted him with this, that Jacob's threatened
Speaker 4: her that if it came down to public credibility between
Speaker 4: the two of them, that he would win and he
Speaker 4: would be believed about what had been taking place over
Speaker 4: her in a nutshell. She was the wrong person to
Speaker 4: threaten to keep quiet, She obviously did not. Many people
Speaker 4: continued to support David Jacobs, as he had predicted a
Speaker 4: battle of reputations would favor him, and that was true
Speaker 4: to a certain extent. Richard Dolan was among those that
Speaker 4: tried to argue there were extenuating circumstances for Jacobs's behavior.
Speaker 2: Richard Dolan is a prominent pro UFO author.
Speaker 4: However, he never produced these extenuating circumstances or back that up,
Speaker 4: and it seemed to me there was a collective effort
Speaker 4: that Dolan was part of from the UFO community to
Speaker 4: not want to change streams, like we've built a lot
Speaker 4: on Bud Hopkins and David Jacobs and we're just not
Speaker 4: willing to change our mind about it.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Vaney's efforts at exposing Jacob's misconduct with Emma also
Speaker 2: met with hostility from the world of ufology. Remember, Vany
Speaker 2: is not a professional skeptic. He, in fact, is an
Speaker 2: experiencer who simply wants UFO research to be held to
Speaker 2: a standard.
Speaker 6: So we're in We're the in crowd. We're not like
Speaker 6: some debunkers from outside of upology. This is actually happening
Speaker 6: to us. But if this aspect of it were real,
Speaker 6: we'd be all over it. Telling you that this that
Speaker 6: we believe, this aspect of it is real, But no,
Speaker 6: it goes the other way. In fact, we see what
Speaker 6: looked to me to be potential crimes, if not crimes,
Speaker 6: certainly unethical behavior. And to expose that got us nothing
Speaker 6: but black lilisted from all of his cronies, all of
Speaker 6: his people in this cottage industry, which you can speak
Speaker 6: out about UFOs and things like that, like you can
Speaker 6: dissect certain cases, but you're not allowed to sort of
Speaker 6: speak truths to power about euthology itself. You're not allowed
Speaker 6: to call into question all of you follow she itself.
Speaker 6: That's a no no. And so to do that again
Speaker 6: is to be blacklisted. You know, you're not going to
Speaker 6: get speaking engagements. These people certainly are going to come
Speaker 6: on your show anytime soon, and they're just going to
Speaker 6: trash you every chance they get. They have no problem
Speaker 6: with that, They have no problem with the misogyny of
Speaker 6: all of this.
Speaker 2: Emma herself was vilified for telling her story. She mentions
Speaker 2: a Carol here, who is Carol Rainey who you heard
Speaker 2: from a couple of episodes ago and in season one
Speaker 2: she is Bud Hopkins' ex wife and former research partner.
Speaker 3: And then there was a bit of a controversy because
Speaker 3: most people attacked me, and also Carol Rainey, who also
Speaker 3: came out and said what she had observed about bad
Speaker 3: Hopkins's research. And we were just quite savagely aspected that
Speaker 3: there were some people of the UFO field it realized
Speaker 3: just how bad it was, and then there was a
Speaker 3: kind of a controversy between basically two opposing camps. In
Speaker 3: the end, people they thought that Hopkins and Jacobs were perfect,
Speaker 3: and that Caroline and I were these awful people, you know,
Speaker 3: for some reason, trying to tear them down, and then
Speaker 3: other people who realized that what was going on with
Speaker 3: Jacobs's research and Hopkins's research was just not okay. There's
Speaker 3: still a lot of support for Jacob's and Hopkins in
Speaker 3: the UFO field.
Speaker 2: One final point in this saga is the role that
Speaker 2: David Jacob's academic institution did or didn't play in overseeing
Speaker 2: his research. There are strong regulations on how research can
Speaker 2: be conducted, especially what is called human subjects research. Academic
Speaker 2: and other institutions that engage in research involving human subjects
Speaker 2: have an institutional review board that evaluates research proposals to
Speaker 2: see if they are compatible with human subjects regulations. David
Speaker 2: Jacobs was employed by Temple University, which which has an
Speaker 2: institutional review board that you think would have had some
Speaker 2: questions about Jacob's research, but that turned out not to
Speaker 2: be the case. Soon after discovering the multiple personality disorder tape,
Speaker 2: Emma filed a complaint with Temple University.
Speaker 3: A few months later, I filed a complaint with Temple University,
Speaker 3: and they initially said they were going to investigate it,
Speaker 3: and then I didn't hear from them. They never asked
Speaker 3: to speak to me, they never asked for any of
Speaker 3: my evidence. And then I got this little letter saying
Speaker 3: that he wasn't writing a book, and they just ignored
Speaker 3: all that, the entire substance of my complaint, and I
Speaker 3: kind of realized at that point that, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: they were just covering it up. A few months later,
Speaker 3: the following year, I then filed a complaint with the
Speaker 3: Office of Human Research Protections, who oversee Temples research to
Speaker 3: make sure that they're abiding by human subject protections. And
Speaker 3: then Temple then apparently made a case to them that
Speaker 3: Jacobs was not actually conducting research. He was just collecting
Speaker 3: oral history, and I think they did that because oral
Speaker 3: history is exempt from OHRP oversight.
Speaker 2: Jacob's positioned his work with Emma and other abductees as
Speaker 2: collecting oral histories. Oral history projects documenting a person's history
Speaker 2: or getting their general reflections on the past, is not
Speaker 2: considered human subjects research. But needless to say, oral history
Speaker 2: projects don't entail planting hypnotic suggestions or even hypnotizing subjects
Speaker 2: in the first place.
Speaker 3: But then they said they were still concerned about it
Speaker 3: and they would ask Temple to investigate it voluntarily. And
Speaker 3: then Temple then came back and said they couldn't investigate
Speaker 3: it because he wasn't doing research. Temple did nothing. They
Speaker 3: just covered it up, and he went on having clients
Speaker 3: and they knew what he was doing because they knew
Speaker 3: about like and they still allowed him to have clients.
Speaker 3: Knew that he was hypnotizing them.
Speaker 2: So again, was Jacob's delusional. No one has probably thought
Speaker 2: about this more than Emma Woods.
Speaker 3: So I don't feel that he was trying to learn anything,
Speaker 3: And looking back, I don't actually personally believe that he
Speaker 3: believes any of it. I don't know what his agenda was.
Speaker 3: It could be that he just wanted to write books,
Speaker 3: or it was helping him in his course at Temple University.
Speaker 3: But I actually now don't believe that he ever believed
Speaker 3: any of it. It was such deliberate leading, and he's
Speaker 3: very aware that leading causes false memories. I mean, he's
Speaker 3: written about that, he's talked about that, and the leading
Speaker 3: was so overt and so deliberate. He was making sure
Speaker 3: that I remembered that under their gnosis.
Speaker 2: In the end, after all that you went through with
Speaker 2: Jacob's and the after math of her exposing his research practices,
Speaker 2: she still lives with memories that he suggested to her
Speaker 2: while she was under hypnosis, and.
Speaker 3: I still remember them now. They're part of my experience
Speaker 3: of my life. Even though I know most of it's
Speaker 3: probably false, it still there still feels real.
Speaker 2: So we have looked at what happens when researchers develop specific,
Speaker 2: strongly held views about the existence of UFOs and the
Speaker 2: meaning of interactions with UFOs and aliens. But what does
Speaker 2: that mean for right now, as we are in the
Speaker 2: midst of a resurgence of interest. To answer that question,
Speaker 2: we have to travel back more than fifty years to
Speaker 2: a place on the border of West Virginia and Ohio
Speaker 2: next time on Strange Arrivals.
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted
Speaker 1: by Toby Ball and produced by rima Il Kayali, Jesse Funk,
Speaker 1: and Noami Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Mankey, and supervising producer Josh Thame, with voice
Speaker 1: acting by Dylan Fagan. Learn more about the show at
Speaker 1: Grimminmild dot com, slash Strange Arrivals and find more podcasts
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